
TREATY OF GHENT 



AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL 

SOCIETY ON ITS ONE HUNDRED AND 

TENTH ANNIVERSARY 



Tuesday, November 17, 1914 



BY 



WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE, LL.D. 



NEW YORK 

PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY 

1914 



THE TREATY OF GHENT 



AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL 

SOCIETY ON ITS ONE HUNDRED AND 

TENTH ANNIVERSARY 



Tuesday, November 17, 1914 



BY 



WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE, LL.D. 



NEW YORK 

PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY 

1914 



^ ^C> 6 



3 






OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY 



PRESIDENT, 

JOHN ABEEL WEEKES. 

FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT, 

WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE. 

SECOND VICE-PRESIDENT, 

WALTER LISPENARD SUYDAM. 

THIRD VICE-PRESIDENT, 

GERARD BEEKMAN. 

FOURTH VICE-PRESIDENT, 

FRANCIS ROBERT SCHELL. 

FOREIGN CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, 

ARCHER MILTON HUNTINGTON. 

DOMESTIC CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, 

JAMES BENEDICT. 

RECORDING SECRETARY, 

FANCHER NICOLE. 

TREASURER, 

CLARENCE STORM. 

LIBRARIAN, 

ROBERT HENDRE KELBY. 



EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 



FIRST CLASS — FOR ONE YEAR, ENDING I915. 

CHARLES EUSTIS ORVIS, J. ARCHIBALD MURRAY, 
BENJAMIN \V. B. BROWN. 

SECOND CLASS — FOR TWO YEARS, ENDING I916. 

ACOSTA NICHOLS, STANLEY W. DEXTER. 

THIRD CLASS — FOR THREE YEARS, ENDING I917. 

FREDERIC DELANO WEEKES, PAUL R. TOWNE, 
R. HORACE GALLATIN. 

FOURTH CLASS — ^FOR FOUR YEARS, ENDING I918. 

DANIEL PARISH, JR., JAMES BENEDICT, 

ARCHER M. HUNTINGTON. 

DANIEL PARISH, Jr., Chairman. 

ROBERT H. KELBY, Secretary. 

[The President, Vice-Presidents, Recording Secretary, 
Treasurer, and Librarian are members of the Executive 
Committee.] 



PROCEEDINGS 

At a meeting of The New York Historical Society, 
held in its Hall on Tuesday evening, November 17th, 
19 14, to celebrate the One Hundred and Tenth An- 
niversary of the Founding of the Society. 

The proceedings were opened with prayer by the 
Rev. William Montague Geer, S.T.D., Vicar of St. 
Paul's Chapel, New York. 

The President addressed the Society on the history, 
progress and needs of the Institution. 

The Anniversary Address, entitled: "The Treaty 
of Ghent," was delivered by William Milligan Sloane, 
LL.D., First Vice-President of the Society. 

Upon the conclusion of the address Mr. Frederic 
Delano Weekes, with remarks, submitted the following 
resolution, which was adopted unanimously: 

Resolved, That a vote of thanks be expressed to 
our distinguished First Vice-President, William Milligan 
Sloane, LL.D., for his most able and interesting 
address entitled: "The Treaty of Ghent," that has 
so happily commemorated to our mutual advantage 
and pleasure the One Hundred and Tenth Anniversary 
of the Founding of this Society, and that Dr. Sloane be 
requested to furnish the Society with a copy for pub- 
lication. 

The Society then adjourned. 

Extract from the Minutes. 
Fancher Nicoll, 
Recording Secretary. 



THE TREATY OF GHENT 

^ LIO is a stately Muse; but not destitute of humor. 
^^ Infernal as are the many scenes through which 
she has, alas, too often to guide her steps, there are 
intervales of verdant pastures across which she strolls 
beside quiet waters, meditating the hidden meanings 
of circumstances and events. The obstinate inertia of 
social and political systems arouses the primitive pas- 
sion for battle; what peaceful agitation cannot accom- 
plish, war, grim and terrible, has so far in the record 
of history either granted or denied. This in peaceful 
perspective the historian is forced to admit. But what 
the gains and losses, and what the credit or debit 
balance is, has to be calculated in the council chamber, 
where treaties are made. The reckoning is not easy, 
for the ambition of the statesman and his ruses are 
comparable to those of the warrior, while personality 
tells far more in debate than in battle. The strate- 
gist works alone, the negotiator in contact with his 
antagonist. Without, the warfare has not ceased and 
every turn of fortune re-arranges on one day the con- 
ditions of the day before. In warfare there is a central 
power, in conference the dominance is fortuitous. The 
former rarely sees a fight without result; in the latter 



8 THE TREATY OF GHENT 

the closing hour of a weary day marks neither retreat 
nor advance. There are feints and armistices in both, 
but the plenipotentiary never unmasks. The document 
which has given us a century of peace with Great 
Britain is as perfect an example of diplomatic contest 
as the patient Clio has ever perused, both as a riddle 
to be read and a conjuncture of facts and persons flung 
together at haphazard to compose trouble, and write a 
public charter. 



Among the pygmies who dominated Europe in the 
decline of Napoleon, the Czar Alexander was the 
showiest. By education a liberal, his sorry experiences 
had perverted him into a bigoted legitimist. His pseudo- 
piety rested on the temperament of a dreamer. The 
tortures of humiliating defeats in war and diplomacy 
rendered him as gloomy in disaster as he proved to be 
pompous and presumptuous in the hour of victory. 
The alliance into which he entered at Tilsit to bolster 
his own and Napoleon's absolutism was working badly 
and had proved unholy; his Egeria, Frau von Krudener, 
was a religious mystic; the sanction of his policies was 
any convenient distortion of Scripture. For the work- 
ing of Metternich's system — intervention, suppression, 
reaction — a system of which Russia might become at 
once a stay and a strut, it was desirable that Napo- 
leon's aggressions should end and that Great Britain 



THE TREATY OF GHENT 9 

should be able, unhampered, to co-operate. But Great 
Britain was very much absorbed in an exasperating 
Spanish peninsular war. Her naval supremacy was in 
no jeopardy as yet, but her military prestige was mount- 
ing and falling in Spain like the gauge in a leaky boiler. 
She was engaged, moreover, in a transoceanic war with 
us, a struggle for the ruin of our neutral commerce and 
the retention of supremacy in North America. This 
conflict was only in its initial stages but the stake was 
enormous and prognostics were far from favorable. 

As for Alexander's own situation nothing could have 
appeared more desperate. We had declared war on 
June i8, 1812. Napoleon was invading Russia, winning 
battle after battle, and striking at her very heart on his 
way to Moscow, which he entered on September seventh. 
Alexander had denounced the French alliance just six 
months earlier and these were the consequences ! Never 
was the necessity for concentrated British attention 
more imperative. During the same six months our 
military disasters were unbroken but our career of 
naval victory had begun. The ship duels were already 
eclipsing in blind terror the gains which armies were 
winning for England. It was at this juncture that 
Alexander proposed mediation between us and Great 
Britain, an action which so many Americans have 
regarded as inaugurating an international friendship 
between the most backward and the most advanced of 
the gigantic modern states. When Clio muses she must 



10 THE TREATY OF GHENT 

see the humorous side to the gratitude of a great, free 
people, for a tyrant's last resource to maintain himself. 

Whatever her thoughts, we have to note the fact as 
an effort, futile indeed but an effort to compose the strife 
between us and Great Britain. Our minister at St. 
Petersburg, that excellent pedant John Quincy Adams, 
thought the offer a new indication of Russia's friend- 
ship; but had England been consulted? Yes, although 
as yet there was no response: it would certainly however 
be favorable, as was Adams' reply. The Czar's proposal 
was therefore fonvarded post haste (five months was 
then post haste) to Washington where about March 9, 
181 3, it was accepted by iVlonroewith unseemly precipi- 
tancy in a state paper abounding in fulsome flattery to 
Alexander. Statesmen dearly loved a junket then as 
now and a commission to negotiate, as motley as a 
patch-work quilt, got itself appointed; Bayard and 
Gallatin, federalist and republican, sailed down the 
Delaware on May ninth. They were off for St. Peters- 
burg to assist Adams in his work: three cooks to spoil 
the broth which one could have made palatable, pro- 
vided always that he were ever to have the chance. 

A musing Clio once again: Great Britain had im- 
periously refused Alexander's offer and when our cross 
match team, able, willing, kind but unbroken to their 
new harness (or any other diplomatic discipline), when 
Bayard and Gallatin arrived at Gothenburg in Sweden 
they found themselves suspended in mid air. Lord 



THE TREATY OF GHENT II 

Castlereagh, quickly informed of their arrival, instantly 
told the British ambassador in Russia, Lord Cathcart, 
firmly to pray the Czar for inaction. But the Czar was 
in Bohemia, well nigh a thousand miles oflf, and when 
the dispatch was put into his hands. Napoleon's fall 
seemed imminent. Alexander's affection for America 
was forgotten and he expressed entire contentment 
with England's stand. Learning then of our legate's 
arrival he veered and renewed the offer. Meantime 
Castlereagh had also veered, several points; expressing 
in a second dispatch to Cathcart, willingness to treat 
with the American envoys but not under the Czar's 
good offices. The meeting might be at Gothenburg or 
London; it could not be at St. Petersburg; British 
public opinion was already exasperated; intervention 
in that or any other form of condescension would set 
fire to the thatch. 

Meantime the allies had been defeated by Napoleon, 
whose fall now appeared less imminent, and the Czar 
had fled to Toplitz. At this place Russia was served 
with fine words and compliments, but notified that the 
American commissioners, by this time in Russia, must 
come to Gothenburg or London if they desired to follow 
the only possible course: to treat directly and without 
mediation with British commissioners. And so our 
grand but selfish Alexander disappears from the com- 
bination of circumstances which ultimately produced 
the prodigy known as the Treaty of Ghent. Early in 



12 THE TREATY OF GHENT 

November the British ultimatum reached Washington 
and was hurriedly accepted by Madison's administra- 
tion, perplexed and bewildered by the chaotic public 
opinion of the hour about everything. From its two 
travelling negotiators it had no single dispatch or mes- 
sage; the President and his advisers were in total dark- 
ness as to the fact that the rather exasperated commis- 
sion had departed from St. Petersburg; Gallatin indeed 
had failed of confirmation by the Senate. Madison, 
now assured however of co-operation from congress, 
addressed them both at the Russian capital, giving 
new instructions, announcing new commissions, and 
assuring strong support. 

On January 25, 1814, the two migrating diplomats, 
acting on their knowledge and judgment, had left 
Russia, had travelled leisurely across northern Europe, 
and crossing from Amsterdam had reached London on 
the morrow of Napoleon's abdiction and banishment 
to Elba. City and country were aflame with vain- 
glory. Europe saved and pacified, the American blot 
on the British scutcheon could now be totally erased 
and the despised, rebellious offspring beyond the seas 
brought to the feet of a haughty parent for correction. 
Three bodies of Wellington's peninsular veterans were 
dispatched to strengthen the British land forces: part 
to Canada, part to Washington, but the main force to 
seize New Orleans as a pawn for use in the tradings 
of an eventual peace negotiation. Another campaign 



THE TREATY OF GHENT I 3 

more vigorous than the preceding must first be fought 
and then terms on the general basis of the status ante 
helium would probably be the very best we could hope 
for. In this grim prospect there was nothing humor- 
ous; St. Petersburg, Gothenburg, the many splendid 
cities of the north, the entertainments of Amsterdam, 
the delights, the hardships and the chagrin of these 
travels at the public expense paled before the stern 
reality of an imperative but perplexing duty. 

Meantime the commission had been enlarged and 
another junket organized: to the names of Bayard, 
Gallatin and Adams were added those of Henry Clay, a 
homespun, representative republican still, and Jona- 
than Russell, the new minister to Sweden. These 
with their retinue of secretaries, paid and volunteer, 
reached Gothenburg in time to learn that they were 
to proceed thence to Ghent, chosen finally, it ap- 
peared, as the seat of negotiations. This was another 
sign of Great Britain's humor, not to say temper, but 
suppliants could not command and by the last week 
in June, 1814, the American commission was assembled 
in the ancient, torpid city, lodged in a decent and 
commodious house still standing on the corner of two 
streets known (in Belgian French) as those of the 
Fields and the Fullers. 

Suppliants, we felt ourselves to be; were we really 
that? By British severities we had been stung into a 
challenge for the consequences of which we were utter- 



14 THE TREATY OF GHENT 

ly unprepared and what with political generals, what 
with financial embarrassment, what with the disaffec- 
tion and half-heartedness of the North and Northeast 
we were in a sorry plight when Bayard and Gallatin 
left home. By the time the commission reached Ghent 
matters had improved somewhat; there was discipline 
in our army and our many successful ship duels had 
done much to restore the national self-respect, while 
our privateers had become the terror of the seas; our 
victories on the lakes had been brilliant. Nevertheless 
we had suffered defeat and outrage, and taken as a 
whole our people were sullen and dispirited. The At- 
lantic seaboard was harassed by blockaders and land- 
ing parties, while a British fleet with five thousand 
troops was about to sail for the Potomac, the expedi- 
tion which even before the peace-commissioners fore- 
gathered had destroyed our national capital and put 
our government to an ignominious flight. Yes, out- 
wardly and apparently we were suppliants, and humble 
ones at that. Our envoys were treated as such, for they 
were left to cool their heels and pass the time in idle 
distractions as best they could for about two months 
before the British commission arrived in the silent, 
dreary, half forsaken, little town, a place of departed 
glories. 

And what a contemptuous commission was the 
British, when it did arrive. Contemptible we might, 
in comparison with our own and from the stand- 



THE TREATY OF GHENT 15 

point of the present, be tempted to say. Bayard was 
a person of the highest distinction for statesman- 
ship and breeding; as a Federalist he had opposed 
the war and was a masterly compromiser. Clay, 
the frontier radical and Republican, had hotly sup- 
ported the war. Better known at the moment as a 
politician than as a statesman, he had the habits of 
his home, being careless in manner and a passionate 
gamester. Gallatin, another Republican, was the ablest 
negotiator of them all, thoroughly equipped by the 
education of books and of life for the leading part he 
played; a shrewd, daring, inscrutible man. When we 
say Adams, the sound connotes a power which for 
generations has passed in the stock; John Quincy pos- 
sessed it, intellectually pedantic, cock-sure and prosy 
as he was. Like two of his colleagues he was a patri- 
cian, with manners and character. Russell too was 
dignified and an experienced public servant. In the 
rather humorous suite of secretaries and onhangers 
each of the principals found companionship to his liking, 
and sympathy as well, with one or more members 
throughout the weary weeks of idling, bickering, card 
playing, tippUng, consulting and deciding. Though 
the individual commissioners were unsympathetic and 
jealous of each other, yet for the United States of 1814 
the commission was alike important and representa- 
tive. 

The British commission, with its cool, imperti- 



l6 THE TREATY OF GHENT 

nent assurance, dawdling for weeks before appearing 
on the scene, was quite otherwise from any point of 
view. The head of the trio was Gambier, an aging 
nonentity of fine presence, ennobled for his share in 
the nefarious bombardment of Copenhagen, twenty 
years earlier, and since then a placeman of no emi- 
nence. The second was Goulburn, a youngish and 
little-known scholar, whose unquestioned abilities had 
been recognized in the appointment he had received 
as virtual leader. The third was a certain William 
Adams, somebody's protegee, who though a learned 
doctor of civil law had so far been a nobody, and who 
remained a nobody at Ghent and thereafter. All three 
had the contemptuous, well-bred, exasperating air of 
their class, challenging nothing, revealing nothing, 
exacting nothing; but urging the letter of their bond. 
At the distance of a century the imagination could 
fashion and represent nothing more humorous than 
this dual group, in which our men actually were bored 
to extinction by delay and uneasiness, while the others 
wore the mask of boredom with mere formalities, need- 
lessly elaborate and dealing with far-off, indifferent 
trifles. Behind the British mask there was also, how- 
ever, the deepest anxiety, for they knew they were 
only pawns of a cabinet, distracted by vacillation, 
alarmed by the terrible uncertainties of the continen- 
tal questions pressing for settlement, and menaced by 
domestic upheaval in regard to taxation, radicalism, 



THE TREATY OF GHENT I7 

and a dumb social fury with the galling inhibitions on 
personal liberty impatiently endured for weary years 
only because of the Napoleonic menace. The day of 
reckoning with Tory tyranny and military restraints 
was already dawning. Blustering and preening as 
were the upper classes over the fall of Paris and their 
early successes in America, national common sense was 
temporarily obscured; but those for whom power was 
an end in itself were not fooled for a moment, and such 
exactly were the keen adventurers at the helm of State. 
^ Throughout July and well into August the American 
commissioners amused themselves as best they could 
in their hired house, where they lodged and boarded 
and had their oifices. Furious at the prolonged dela;^ 
and humiliated by the amused condescension of all 
observers their daily intercourse was far from harmoni- 
ous. In particular the all-night card parties of Clay, his 
inelegant table manners, and his undisguised defiance of 
Adams' petulance went far to create a breach in the 
American ranks. On Saturday, August seventh, the 
British arrived, and took lodgings at the Golden Lion; 
after the manner of ambassadors dealing with ministers 
of inferior rank they at once notified our representatives 
of their readiness to receive them. This insult restored 
harmony in the American home. The experienced 
Adams showed the bitterest resentment and the others, 
except the calm Gallatin, were prepared for any ex- 
treme. 1 1 was the latter who conceived the clever retort 



iS THE TREATY OF GHENT 

eventually sent: that the Americans would meet the 
British at any time and at any place mutually con- 
venient, preferably the Netherlands Hotel. 

It was a master stroke, our diplomacy won the first 
point; and when our envoys arrived next day at the 
appointed time and place the others were on hand to 
receive them with courtesy, though not with grace. 
Gambier was a religious precisian but an ecclesiastical 
gentleman; Goulburn, destined to end his great career 
as Chancellor of the Exchequer, attained distinction in 
spite of his rude ways; while Adams, an admirable 
lawyer with no experience in international affairs, over- 
played his role and was rather too brusque and glum. 
Without delay the British terms, based presumably 
on their successes of the previous year, and the pre- 
sumptive success of the current summer, were coldly 
presented. As two conditions antecedent were the in- 
clusion as parties to the negotiation, or rather the 
final, general pacification, of the Indians allied with 
Great Britain and the creation of a broad mark or 
neutral zone between their and our possessions. They 
were willing furthermore to treat of impressment; but 
only on the basis of once a subject always a subject, 
at least, if native born; they would treat likewise of 
boundary revision without acquisition of new territory 
and of the fisheries. 

It required several formal meetings to secure fur- 
ther definition. The barrier between Canada and the 



THE TREATY OF GHENT I9 

United States was to be the zone of Indian defense; 
in other words all that is now Michigan, Wisconsin, 
Illinois, most of Indiana and part of Ohio was to be 
delivered over to the Indians. To Gallatin's question 
it was replied that the white settlers must be left to 
the tender mercies of their foes and spared, if at all, by 
their own enterprise. As to boundary revision, parts 
of Maine and New Hampshire were to be Canadian, 
the forts at Niagara and Sackett's Harbor were to be 
dismantled, and the United States might never have 
an armed force on the Great Lakes or their tributaries 
as, on the other hand, Great Britain could and would. 
These points constituting an ultimatum, Adams drafted 
a lengthy refusal to treat: Gallatin stripped it of fury, 
Clay of rhetoric. Bayard of redundancy, while Russell 
edited spelling and punctuation. The original author 
could not recognize his own work; but it was sent as 
edited and preparations for departure were somewhat 
ostentatiously begun. Clay, the inveterate gambler, 
was convinced, and he alone, that the British would 
not call the bluff. The others believed honestly that 
all was over. 

On August fourteenth, Castlereagh, with a retinue 
requiring twenty carriages for transportation, passed 
through the town on the way to the congress at Vienna. 
What he said to his commissioners does not appear but it 
somewhat changed their bearing. Adams' "patch- 
work," as he styled it, was speedily forwarded to Lon- 



20 THE TREATY OF GHENT 

don, and at the end of ten days the British admitted 
that the Indian zone was no longer a condition ante- 
cedent. Still our Americans stood firm; perhaps Clay 
was determined to force the British hand. Indeed, 
our envoys appear to have been full of the gambling 
spirit, and played of nights to pass the time. Adams 
ruefully records his losses to Clay; one session lasted 
the whole night. Again the British commission con- 
sulted "home" for instructions and had shamefacedly 
to admit that neither zone nor lake supremacy were 
indispensable, though the Indians must be made a 
party in the result of the negotiations. 

Here was a tremendous concession, and that too in 
the face of continued military successes, well known to 
the exultant Britons and the depressed Americans alike. 
Yet our envoys kept right on with their card parties 
and discarded even these terms. The ponderous and 
voluminous Adams was excused from penning the re- 
joinder and Gallatin, indifferent to the puppets at 
Ghent, composed one for the consideration of the prin- 
cipals in the matter, the cabinet at London. Again 
there was the now usual intermission of negotiations. 
The dwellers on the corner of Fields and Fullers Streets 
grew nervous and touchy even for them: Clay and 
Adams came to an open explosive rupture and Russell 
hied him to a hotel for peace. But the solemn news 
that Washington had been captured and burned pre- 
vented utter dissolution. The fourth note of the Brit- 



THE TREATY OF GHENT 21 

ish was then delivered, and while our distracted, dis- 
jointed commission got together once more for busi- 
ness there was such serious friction that they are re- 
ported to have well nigh overlooked the further con- 
cession from England, contained in a polite suggestion 
that Messrs. Gambier, Goulburn and Adams must have 
overlooked or misunderstood the letter of their full 
power; what was wanted in the Indian matter was 
merely amnesty. This our bickering embassy refused 
to accept, and formally at that, in writing. 

Adams had been led into temptation, but as he 
ruefully admits in his diary had not been delivered 
from evil. In spite of copious and assiduous Bible 
reading, five chapters in the New Testament every 
morning, he nevertheless haunted to excess, as he felt, 
theatrical shows and the gaming table. In his aleatory 
exercises he had lost much of his balance and at this 
juncture far outran the colder Clay in calling the ad- 
versary's hand. The rejoinder desired should be as- 
signed to himself to write, dignified and long, with a 
convincing argument for the cession of all Canada! 
The brains of his colleagues literally reeled, but they 
managed to restrain his foolhardiness and commit the 
writing of a brief acceptance to Clay. Of course the 
Puritan patrician took exactly such liberties with this 
draft which he disliked in all its parts, as were regu- 
larly taken with his own. The result was a breach 
and considerable railing, the interchange of most un- 



22 THE TREATY OF GHENT 

complimentary language about Massachusetts and 
Kentucky respectively. 

There was leisure to nurse grievances in the now 
customary long pause before return news from Lon- 
don. This time there came an imperative demand 
for a treaty on the basis of uti possedetis; reten- 
tion, that is, of the territory each occupies when ne- 
gotiation closes. The British held the Maine coast 
as far as the Penobscot and were encouraged by 
the skirmishes on the line of the Niagara river, 
and by the still dubious situation in the southwest. 
Our commissioners were exasperated by the new 
attitude, drew together, composed a defiant retort, 
and threatened a final rupture of negotiation. When 
their answer reached London it was laid before Well- 
ington with the offer of supreme command in America. 
The duke would obey, of course, but like our commis- 
sioners he considered the British gains to be only 
temporary and thought the demand of his government 
excessive. It was accordingly withdrawn and the fact 
was known at Ghent on October thirty-first. 

Meantime the American envoys had renewed their 
quarrels; Clay's pride was wounded by social neglect 
or oversight and Russell's by studied insult from the 
British and the Belgians, both being treated as if they 
were mere secretaries of Bayard, Adams and Gallatin. 
They withdrew from the American embassy, at least 
so far as to eat and lodge elsewhere. But there was 



THE TREATY OF GHENT 23 

a rejoinder to be written of course, and not only that, 
the British requested the draft of such a treaty as 
would be acceptable. Adams undertook the task, and 
with a statesman's skill and foresight proposed a peace 
on the basis of the status quo ante, restitution of terri- 
tory and property, postponement of all disputes for 
later and peaceful negotiation. This would leave to 
the British their treaty right of navigating the Missis- 
sippi which Clay insisted should be unconditionally 
surrendered; it would also leave to the New England 
fishermen the right under the same treaty to fish on 
the banks as before, which with Adams was equally 
incontestable. 

For a fortnight the American council table was 
a battle ground between the two: alike in personal 
and political hostility. But at the expiration of that 
term definite instructions embodying Adams' exact 
idea arrived from Washington, a staggering blow to 
Clay, who could no longer refuse his signature to the 
draft. There was not a syllable in the paper about 
the specific grievances we had regarded as a sufficient 
"casus belli": commercial oppression, blockades or im- 
pressment. It was on November twenty-sixth that the 
British envoys presented the reply from London; in it 
there was not a word about the fisheries. The British 
placed their own interpretation on our treaty rights 
in that respect, to wit: that war had ended the treaty 
of 1783 and we had no other. But there was a definite 



24 THE TREATY OF GHENT 

Stipulation for the navigation of the Mississippi. This 
was more than Clay could endure; the great river did 
not rise in Canada as had been supposed in 1783, we 
now held not one but both banks, we owned the mouth 
and the great fertile valley was being settled by con- 
siderable numbers of Americans. Our contention was 
that the treaty of 1783, recognizing independence with- 
in certain definite boundaries, was permanent in all its 
parts, including both the fisheries and the Mississippi 
matter. But Clay believed his political future to be 
dependent on liberating the west and southwest from 
every remnant of British interference, and right or 
wrong, consistent or inconsistent, remained obdurate 
in his demand for their exclusion from use of the river. 
Gallatin stood for the permanence of the existing 
treat of 1783 and wrote an article for the new one 
containing renewal both of British rights on the Mis- 
sissippi and American rights in the fisheries. It was 
five days ere Clay could be brought by Gallatin to yield 
in any degree; while Adams, wounded again by the 
ruthless mutilation of his project and utterly outraged 
by Clay's demands, seemed incapable of controlling 
his temper to the extent of even arguing or consulting. 
The claim is made that Gallatin was the real framer 
of the treaty, and in some measure it has been gener- 
ously admitted by Adams' descendants. Certainly 
Gallatin's tact, firmness, and reasonableness rendered 
him at this point the umpire of the embittered struggle. 



THE TREATY OF GHENT 2<j 

Clay's repute as an able compromiser is well known and 
the decision reached was his own. Gallatin's article 
was omitted from the project of the treaty, this Clay 
secured; but appended was a note explaining that in 
view of the permanence of existing treaty obligations it 
had not been thought necessary to mention the fisheries. 
In this he lost for it was really a proposed exchange 
of navigation for fishery rights. The Kentuckian 
thought the treaty a very bad one and said so in pic- 
turesque language. 

Two weeks later the project was returned from 
London with many marginal annotations and an article 
securing to British subjects the river navigation. But, 
most significantly, there was blank silence about the 
fisheries. Adams was glad but Clay was mad, as never 
before. Again Gallatin resumed the role of mediator 
and played it superbly as before. On December first our 
commission made the formal tender of the barter which 
had previously been merely suggested. The reply was 
an offer to leave both questions open by formal agree- 
ment. Our rejoinder was to make mention of neither 
and this was accepted with a promptness expressing 
Great Britain's eagerness for peace. The treaty was 
signed on December 24, 1814. 

The winter of that year was not a pleasant one in 
Europe and least of all in England. British merchants 
were clamorous for a complete renewal of trade after 
the long weary break, and their ships were a prey to 



26 THE TREATY OF GHENT 

our cruisers and privateers. Macdonough's victory on 
the lake had checked one body of WelHngton's veterans 
at Plattsburg, another had sailed away disheartened 
from Baltimore, and the coming defeat of the third at 
New Orleans (January 8, 1815) was to restore American 
self-respect. But peace in America was desired by 
England chiefly because of the European congress at 
Vienna, where the most momentous decisions regarding 
Europe's immediate future were to be reached. Great 
Britain's radicals with their secret societies and inflam- 
matory propaganda put Tory rule in jeopardy: and, 
while it was Waterloo which gave it a new lease of 
life, her statesmen were full of dark foreboding. Such 
energies as they had were liberated by the Treaty of 
Ghent, and it was with a sigh of immense relief that 
the country, unhampered from behind, could gird itself 
for the eastward strife in the Austrian capital. But 
there was no extraordinary jubilation ; Great Britain was 
way worn and still had no vision of her journey's end. 
Upon receipt of the news in America there was 
momentarily a frenzy of delight: the war was over, 
there was a peace. But the perusal of the treaty, 
article by article, reduced the blaze to smouldering 
embers and covered the land with a gray mist of smoke 
and vapor. The conflict was ended and there were not 
only no gains, but losses: unless exhausted quiet be a 
gain. There was still a treaty of commerce to be made 
and there was to be no payment of our spoliation claims: 



THE TREATY OF GHENT 27 

the fixing of our frontiers was to be entrusted to joint 
commissions meeting on British soil; we established no 
right whatever to the islands in the Bay of Fundy and 
no natural right to the fisheries in British waters. 
Where were the Free Trade and Sailors' Rights for 
which we went to war? No concession, no mention 
even of them. The West Indian trade was ours no 
more. Thus the Federalists in full cry, for political 
purposes; and the Republicans were silenced. It seems 
to have been felt that the initial demands of Great 
Britain were a preposterous bluff not to be reckoned 
at all in the balance sheet and it was not emphasized, 
indeed the public did not even notice, that she had 
secured no acknowledgment of any right to search our 
ships, impress our seamen or declare paper blockades; 
that in all likelihood the union had been saved from 
disruption — Massachusetts and Connecticut commis- 
sioners were in Washington when the news from Ghent 
arrived to demand a share of Federal taxes and the 
right to raise State armies: everybody forgot that at 
least some degree of commercial freedom, possibly 
absolute liberty and independence had been secured. 

Many Americans harbor strange delusions about 
treaties. That of Ghent is lightly esteemed by the 
manufacturers of school books, as too is the previous 
one known as Jay's: simply because there is no bun- 
combe in either. As late as the writer's boyhood we 
still used "readers" and "histories" made in New 



28 THE TREATY OF GHENT 

England: and indignantly bleated about search, im- 
pressment and blockades in our dialogues on the school 
rostrums. The truth is that there is permanence and 
binding validity in treaties in so far only and only in 
so far as there is in them the expression of a political 
and social permanence. The admirable principles of 
international relations, even that of neutrality, have 
always been forgotten and always will be by nations 
when maddened by the lust of conquest or the desperate 
struggle for self-preservation. So too when peace and 
reciprocal advantage make relations easy a minimum 
of treaty sanction is the best in controlling international 
intercourse. For this last reason the Treaty of Ghent 
is a great landmark, and for this reason only did it 
give us in the end all and more than we had contended 
for; arbitration has in the lapse of a century settled all 
those old disputes and others surcharged with even 
greater explosive force. 

Perhaps our bickering negotiators in the dreary 
little Belgian town had prophetic vision, and perhaps 
John Quincy Adams, in spite of his lapses of temper 
and morals, was the clear-sighted lookout on the ship 
of state; let us permit them all to share not only in 
the manifest credit due to Gallatin and to Adams, 
but even in the supreme meed of honor as prophets 
in their own country. We cannot prove their de- 
serts but we can admit them. The course of events 
has been on the side of Anglo-Saxon peace, a course 



THE TREATY OF GHENT 29 

laid and kept by pilots quite as wise, and look- 
outs quite as clear visioned as even Gallatin and 
Adams. These later statesmen braved for us the storms 
of British passion during our civil war, of Canadian 
resentment about the Alaska boundary and the fisheries 
question: their deserts in the development of mutual 
good will and understanding parallel those of the men 
who laid the footing stones and foundations. There is 
not and cannot be love between any two nations: 
nations have but one loadstar: self-interest, immediate 
or ultimate. The politician who discerns that star and 
steers discreetly for it is a statesman. There is not the 
slightest analogy between a man and a state. Men may 
practice the virtues of the decalogue, unselfishness and 
the love of neighbor; organized society doubtless will in 
the millennium but not before. Meantime the path- 
finders who patiently wait and leave the lapse of time 
to allay passion or clarify the mind are the true heroes 
of history. The council table requires a cool moral 
courage and an adroitness of demeanor which at least 
equal the cunning of the strategist or the swift decision 
of the general. 

We think now, as we said at the beginning, that Clio 
does well to smile as she muses over the Treaty of 
Ghent. The whole course of the negotiation was a 
merry round. The concourse of its negotiators was 
amusing, their walk and conduct was as absurd at 
times as the flouncing of boarding-school boys. In the 



30 THE TREATY OF GHENT 

grav world of politics we have a right to enjoy the far- 
cical interludes. But, masked as were the principals 
and their agents, behind their acting and frisking was 
heaviness of heart. What they achieved, however, was 
good and even great. That two great peoples should 
be celebrating the centennial of a treaty is a fact unique 
in history. The provisions of the treaty of Ghent 
have been stronger than alliances or ententes or under- 
standings; they were intended to keep us apart, they 
have resulted in a hundred years of peace between the 
two branches of one of the great race-stocks of mankind. 



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